Honda Accord Hybrid finally becomes more available

The Honda Accord Hybrid was launched as a 2014 model, and the first few were sold back in October 2013.

But over the next year, despite favorable reviews and a handful of awards, the Accord Hybrid remained a rare beast indeed on dealership lots.

Now, more than a year later, it appears that supply has finally caught up to demand for Honda's 47-mpg hybrid mid-size sedan.

Green Car Reports wrote last August that reader complaints about lack of availability were continuing to come in, 10 months after the hybrid Accord's launch.

At that time, Angie Nucci, senior environment & safety specialist for Honda North America, said Honda was suffering from "component supply constraints" on the hybrid version of the Accord.

Unlike the very low-volume plug-in hybrid Accord, the standard Accord Hybrid is built on the same line as conventional U.S. Accords in Honda's plant in Marysville, Ohio.

The components were likely batteries, electric motors, and/or power electronics, all of them imported from Japan specifically for U.S. production of hybrid Accords.

But those constraints appear to have eased.

Yesterday, Nucci told Green Car Reports in response to a query that Honda's U.S. sales unit said, "The supply of Accord Hybrids in general is in line with the supply of the regular Accord sedan."

Through last July, Honda had sold 8,250 Accord Hybrids. By the end of last year, that number had risen to 13,977, for a rate of about 1,150 cars a month.

It sold an additional 1,435 hybrids in the first two months of this year. (Sales data does not include the plug-in hybrid model.)

While the monthly rate appears to have stayed steady for the last year or so, it's also possible that low gas prices over the last six months have reduced the appeal of the Accord Hybrid.

Sales of the four-model Toyota Prius hybrid line fell 1 percent in 2014 compared to the previous year.

Some context for that fact: The centerpiece of the lineup, the Prius Liftback, is now in its sixth and final model year before an all-new fourth-generation Prius is launched this fall.

Still, the Honda Accord--the entire lineup, composed mostly of gasoline versions--usurped the Prius last year as the most popular car in California.

Complaints from disappointed prospective buyers of the Accord Hybrid have entirely ended, at least to Green Car Reports.

So while notes from readers are only a rough, statistically invalid sample, it appears as though supply and demand for the Honda Accord Hybrid have pretty much evened out--at least while gas prices stay low.

The 2015 Honda Accord Hybrid carries a base price of $30,125 including a mandatory $820 delivery fee. It is rated by the EPA at 47 mpg combined (50 mpg city, 45 mpg highway).